August 2014 Expenditures

Hey, guess what? No vacation = low(er) summer spending! We like this though we are somewhat saddened by our lack of travel. But on the bright side, plenty of time to clean the house, embark on epic home improvement projects, go hiking, teach Frugal Hound how to high-five (success rate = sporadic), and hunt for great trash finds.

This weekend was a bonanza of great trash–many leases turn over on September 1 and, since 65.4% of the population rents here in our fair city of Cambridge, there was a lot of moving goin’ on.

Being the classy frugal weirdos we are, Mr. Frugalwoods and I took the Frugalwoods-mobile on a trash hunt jaunt through the city. We didn’t find any decent furniture as we’d hoped, but not too shabby in the kitchen wares and clothing departments. Never fear, photos to come in a future episode of Great Trash Finds.

Mr. FW at the summit of Mt. Cardigan, which we hiked in August.

Despite our lack of a vacay, we had an awesome August. Here are some of the highlights:

Discovered the sheer delight of having popcorn dipped in homemade hummus for dinner. Try it before you hate on it.

Popped our dinner popcorn outside so as not to heat up the house.

See folks? No need to pay for entertainment! Which brings me to a new section of the Frugalwoods monthly expenditure breakdown extravaganza. Last month a few savvy readers, including Kali @ Common Sense Millennial and reader Laura asked what was up with the missing categories in our budget. And I was like, ladies, you are so right! Without further pontification, here are the things we don’t pay for every month. Are you wondering about any other categories? Hit me up in the comments!

Stuff the Frugalwoods Fam Spends $0 on:

Health insurance: we are mega fortunate that Mr. FW’s generous and progressive company pays not only for his healthcare but for mine too! Future Frugal Baby will be covered in full as well. Can’t tell you how grateful we are for this!

Mobile phones: another area where we are just plain lucky dogs. Both of our employers pay our cell phone bills every month.

Yacht payment plan: our 50′ yacht is paid off.

Trash/recycling: Cambridge doesn’t charge us for either, though we do have pretty hefty property taxes.

Entertainment: when you can scope trash and hike, who needs an entertainment budget? As ya’ll know, I finagle my yoga for free and the woods does not charge us to walk through it. You could count gas for Frugalwoods-mobile in this category if you wanted.

Dining out: we don’t do it except in special circumstances (like Mr. FW’s bday!).

Car Insurance: we pay this once every six months, so it doesn’t show up as a monthly expense.

The crowning glory for Mr. FW’s inventive homemade seltzer machine! Check out his how to post.

Gasoline for Frugalwoods-mobile

$116.27

Extremely high for several reasons: we went on some hikes that required a lot of driving and, we bought gas yesterday because we were in an area where it’s cheaper–the tank wasn’t empty so hopefuly September’s gas will be much lower.

Annual Subscription to Dropbox for Photo Sharing & Storage

$99.00

Mr. FW set us up with an awesome web-based photo sharing & back-up system. This has been a dream of mine for awhile, so we can count this as my Christmas present.

Electric Bill

$90.40

It’s electric! High due to AC usage so as not to bake the Frugal Hound during the weekdays.

Internet

$66.95

Necessary!

Costco Membership Renewal

$55.00

Decided to renew our annual Costco membership. We definitely get our money’s worth on this one.

Medical Appointments

$40.00

Two doctor visits ($20 co-pay each). Glad to have health insurance!

Craft Beer Cellar

$37.25

Mr. FW’s birthday gift of beer! We’ve been drinking it and sharing it with friends all month and still have some left.

Misc. assortment of things from our inagural trip to Ocean State Job Lot (a discount store here in MA. Think Wal-Mart but less classy). It was a, uh, special experience and we’ll definitely go back next time we need household/home goods.

Hardware Store

$4.24

Some tool or piece of hardware for one of our many home improvement projects.

TOTAL SPENT:

$4,542.93

LESS MORTGAGE:

$1,801.92

What do you think? How was your August? Tips, frugal hacks, and advice ALWAYS welcome!

73 Responses

Great overall and as you said some categories are a little higher than normal due to specific reasons. I noticed your Internet costs of $66, compared to what I pay which is $41. What type of service are you getting for that and are there cheaper options available to you in your area? Our August was a lot less expensive that June/July so I’m very happy with this! And huge congrats on the free healthcare and cellphones!

Sounds like August was a great month for you! We don’t usually have an entertainment category, either. We try to do as many free activities as possible. It’s awesome that Mr. FW’s company pays for your health insurance! Looking forward to seeing what you found on your trash hunt.

We pay our car insurance in one go each year so it doesn’t appear on our monthly expenses either 🙂 just need to remember when it is! August sounds like it’s been fab for you – we’ve had a great month too. Here’s to September being just as good!

Sorry if you’ve covered this before, but as this is just a spending report I’m curious. Since you seem to pay your irregular expenses whenever they come up, your spending must vary quite a bit month-to-month. (We use targeted savings account to smooth those irregular expenses since we often can’t absorb them in just our monthly income.) Do you just save every dollar of your income that is not accounted for in your monthly spending, and if so when and where do you do it? I assume you have payroll deductions for some saving, but then do you also save at the start or end of the month (or both) and does the amount change based on your expenses? And what is the savings breakdown between retirement, taxable investments, and cash-equivalents? Feel free to point me to an old post or say you don’t share this stuff!

Great questions! We don’t publish our incomes here for privacy reasons, so this is definitely an incomplete picture of our finances, which I’m sorry about.
-Our monthly spending absolutely varies and we don’t smooth–we just pay as we go. Our aim is for our annual expenses to remain low and consistent. Our savings rate fluctuates from 65%-85% month to month.
-Yes, we do save every dollar of our incomes that’s not accounted for in our monthly spending.
-We both have payroll deductions for our 401Ks. We each contribute the annual federal maximum ($17,500) to our individual 401Ks.
-The rest of our incomes go into a joint money market account (via Fidelity).
-We then make a determination on how much to keep liquid in that money market account and how much to put into our taxable investments account. We don’t keep too much liquid since we can easily liquidate the taxable investments in the case of an emergency.
-We spend directly out of our money market account (primarily through credit cards in order to reap rewards).
-We’ve never had a segregated “savings” account, because we consider everything we don’t HAVE to spend as savings.

Let me know if you have any other questions–I really appreciate the interest! You’ve motivated me to do a post more thoroughly explaining our finances! Thank you 🙂

Your cash flow method sounds a lot like what I used in college! My expenses vary enough now (just under $2,000 on the low end and $6,000 on the high end) due to high, irregular expenses such as insurance, property taxes, and travel months that I prefer to smooth things out more. My monthly budget is about $3,500/month and I let categories like insurance add up throughout the year, while allowing me to save a more consistent amount each month and to not worry about whether I’ll spend more than my paycheck.

I love how FH lets you dress him up in silly outfits. I’m pretty sure my cat would eat my eyeballs if I attempted that. I’m super jealous of the health insurance! I really miss that working full time! Hope you have a great sept!

Kitty PoP learned high fives by me hiding treats between my fingers and holding my hand up to him for a high 5 at about face level when he was sitting up facing me. Then when he smacked my hand with his paw, he would get a treat. Now I don’t have to hide the treats, but he does expect a treat still pretty much every time he high fives. =)

Our spending this month was right around where we plan for our average to be, which is good considering we still spent a decent amount on treats like Mr PoP getting his SCUBA certification.

That’s a great high-five technique! Frugal Hound really loves ear rubs, so she gets those every time she high-fives. She’ll do it for awhile, but then she just kinda gets tired and gives up :). Your spending did look good for August!

Nice Cardigan photo! It’s one of my favorite views in the White Mountains — it’s a hike where you can reminisce about all the other mountains you’ve hiked, because there they are all spread out in front of you!

No wonder you guys are on the fast track to early retirement! 🙂 Even though the home mortgage is by far your largest expense, it’s actually not a true expense but rather just another investment where your money will work for you once you start collecting rent. It looks like you guys don’t have any landline telephone or home security system either. Great numbers for August.

I have never tried popcorn dipper in hummus, but now I want to. You have to share your homemade hummus recipe. This is probably the one food that I have epically failed and it was so awful, I have never wanted to revisit it again. And super jealous of your free healthcare. Hubby’s company covers ours, but we definitely have to pay for some of it out of pocket. Not as bad as if we had to go to the exchanges, but painful nonetheless.

A joke, my friend. I couldn’t resist throwing in a gross representative of conspicuous consumption. You know me, I can’t write a post without a cheap joke! See? I just did it again! CHEAP joke 🙂 Somebody stop me…

I know of people who claim to be frugal, but with a huge asterisk. For example, someone once told me about how they cook at home, ride a bike whenever they can and buy used clothes. These frugal behaviors didn’t transfer to their car purchase though as they drove a $50,000 Lexus.

I don’t think frugality is an “all or nothing” proposition. We all have our compromises. However, the compromises have to be reasonable.

PS: Candy Corn would make a good name for a yacht.
PSS: Candy Corn would make a horrible name for future Frugal Baby.

Since the joke about the Yacht was included, I am not going the HOUND you for more information, instead I am just going to act like future frugal baby and make pun-jokes. You WOOD like that WOODN’T you?

Anyways, great job on the expenses front! Great to see health insurance is fully paid for and cell phones! Pretty sweet deal!

You got me on the yacht as well. I was thinking how the h-e double hockey sticks did they buy a 50 foot yacht, what is this What About Bob? Anytime you are monitoring and keeping track of expenses you are winning, congrats. The Health Insurance and Cell phones are certainly a huge bonus for work, nice to have. Mrs. Even Steven used to have internet card before she moved on, but nothing like a little company perk.

We celebrate our pup’s adoption day every year since we don’t know his real birthday. I love popcorn and hummus, so popcorn with hummus sounds delicious.

You guys are doing amazing with your savings. I always like to see how others spend and save their money, because it gives me good ideas about how to save and spend my own. I’m still trying to convince the bf to build a seltzer system for me. He’s a little nervous, so I might have to wait until my dad comes for Thanksgiving to set it all up 🙂

Ha! I was wondering about the yacht too! I was thinking when do they have time to go on it with all the hiking? Does Frugal Hound wear a life jacket? Did I miss a post on this? Hyuk Hyuk sneaky, very sneaky. You’re spending is da bomb!

Frugal Hound in a life jacket would be adorable! They make them specially sized for greyhounds since they’re not shaped like regular dogs! But, they are expensive and we don’t need one. But, the photo would be priceless!

That is awesome about your health insurance and cell phones. I’m really impressed with your budget. I like to go out to eat too much — it’s my one budget issue! I also don’t buy clothes, makeup, and hardly spend anything on entertainment. Haha I love your dog photo. Congrats on your nomination!

Thanks! I agree, definitely the best way to go to school! Good question on the car insurance–I think the answer is two-fold. 1) we just have 1 car and it is 18 years old! 2) Mr. FW and I both have perfect driving records–neither of has ever gotten a ticket (hope I didn’t just jinx us!).

I love these breakdown posts! One thing that we really struggle with is our water and sewer bill (yes, even without watering the lawn or plants). I’m not seeing one in your budget, though. Did I miss it, or do you not have one?

Our water and sewer bill comes quarterly. Always makes the budget look a little funny, but it’s how the city does it. I’ve often thought it must be quite a shock to people who live paycheck to paycheck to have a non-monthly recurring expense… you really have to remember it’s on its way!

I just found your blog the other day and love it! I feel so bogged down by the unnecessary clutter and keeping up with the Jones spending that happens here. My husband and I have dreams, too, of leaving the city (Vancouver) and fleeing to somewhere further out where we can afford a detached house with some acres for less than the price of our condo in the suburbs; where I can have a veggie garden and we can both quit our 9-5s (not really: 7-5 for me, 9-6 for him currently) and lead a simpler life. Your finance tips and making me looking differently at what we have and what we spend on will definitely help us on our way.

Anyway…

I’m not sure if this is the same in the States, but I assume it is. My brother works for a Costco here (Canada) and apparently you can use a Costco gift card without having a membership, and the gift card doesn’t have to cover the entire purchase. My husband and I have been piggybacking Costco trips with friends and family for a while (we shop with them, they pay the whole amount, we pay them back in cash or email interac in the parking lot like some shady back alley deal) so we don’t have to pay for membership fees, but it does require a lot of coordination. We’re going to try out this gift card shenanigans for our next Costco trip. My brother gave us a couple $10 gift cards for Christmas, so those will be our “membership” for our next two trips.

Hey Sarah! So glad you found us! We definitely feel like there’s a better way to live than the consumer carousel that so many people feel trapped by. That’s awesome that you and your husband are planning to escape the rat race too!

Good to know re. the Costco gift cards! We’ve found that the membership fee is worth it to us–we make up for that cost with the savings in Frugal Hound’s kibble alone. Thanks so much for reading and commenting :)!

[…] August 2014 Expenditures I always enjoy seeing what other people spend, and it was great to see how/why/where the Frugalwoods spend their money. I guess it just fulfills my curious nature. I also like to know where I stand in terms of my own definition of frugality. I’m always aiming to improve my own spending and find areas of fat that could potentially be trimmed, and other budgets usually give me fresh perspective. […]

[…] like to thank Emily from Evolving Personal Finance for her excellent questions after my August 2014 Expenditures post as well as a thoughtful email I received from a reader yesterday, both of which motivated […]

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